Carl did not want to believe. He wanted to know.

Ten long trips around the sun since I last saw that smile, but only joy and thankfulness that on a tiny world in the vastness, for a couple of moments in the immensity of time, we were one.

A lot of people have this ego need that makes them want to believe that Earth is the center of the universe and humans are the most important species, the supreme expression of creation.

If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good skeptic.

And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?

I guess I so desperately want to see us put this planet right. It's so horrifying to me that a fifth of us are starving every night, and that forty thousand children die every single day.

We smoked the way other American families would have wine with dinner. For us, it was our sacrament. It was something that made a great life sweeter in every possible way.

Interviewer: "Didn't [Sagan] want to believe?" Druyan: "He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know.

Science is nothing more than a neverending search for the truth.

Carl took on the military-industrial complex. He campaigned around the world for an end to the production of weapons of mass destruction. To him it was a perversion of science.

People think that if you are a scientist you have to give up that joy of discovery, that passion, that sense of the great romance of life. I say thats completely opposite of the truth.

We have been trained by a culture of violence and we are all agents of passive violence.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally.

I used to worry about what would happen five or 10 years from now, but I don't anymore. I thought about going to medical school because that has always interested me, but decided against it.

Henry figured that the reason the Cheyenne had always ridden Appaloosas into battle was because by the time the men got there, they were so angry with the horses they were ready to kill everything.

I spent most of my time talking to God more than to people.

I don’t want to sleep alone,” she says gently. And I don’t force her to. Sarai falls fast asleep curled up next to me in my bed. Right where I want her.

Some see the glass half full, some see it half empty, and some see it crawling with toxic alien parasites who want to devour your pancreas.

Sorry is for the things you've done that you shouldn't have not for things you believe in.

Do you like scary stories? he asked ominously. Jacob Black